


begin again where frosts were hard

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Future Fic, Growing Old Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-10
Updated: 2009-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Obviously," Rodney said, "it's not that I <i>object</i> to them recognising my genius—"</p>
            </blockquote>





	begin again where frosts were hard

**Author's Note:**

> For Jenn on her birthday.

"Obviously," Rodney said, "it's not that I _object_ to them recognising my genius—"

"Obviously," John said mildly over the top of his copy of _Anna Karenina_. Behind the black wire rims of his glasses, one eyebrow arched upwards. The fine lines around his eyes deepened slightly with low-banked amusement.

"—but I'm just saying, there could have been far fewer cracks about me being the _elder statesman_ of Lantean science."

"Rodney." John turned to the next page of his book, apparently fully absorbed in his tale of aristocratic Russian adultery. "It _was_ your retirement dinner."

"Exactly!" Rodney kicked off his hated dress shoes, sending each one flying in a different direction, before he flopped down on the bed next to John. The bed vibrated with the impact, and John sighed quietly before sticking a bookmark into page 146 and closing his book. "Which simply means that I have reached a stage in my—frankly brilliant—career which no longer requires me to do mundane things like paperwork or administrative nonsense or, or..."

"Remembering the names of your staff?" John said, placing the book and his glasses onto the low table next to their bed.

Rodney grunted, wriggling his way out of his pants and tossing them off the bed, so that when he tugged the covers up over them both, he was wearing only his old white undershirt and a pair of red-striped boxers. "There are a lot of them, okay?" he said once he'd settled himself to his satisfaction, pillows fluffed up beneath his head and toes wriggling against John's.

"You called Maddy 'the niece thing'," John reminded him, tapping the panel over their heads so that the lights faded out and the room was lit only by the two full moons, hanging low over the rolling Lantean ocean.

"One time!" Rodney said, voice rising high with outrage. "We'd been in the labs for 17 hours and I was very tired! And I already apologised to Jeannie! A lot!"

"Hrm." John's hum was noncommittal, but he rolled onto his side, letting the palm of his hand rest on the curve of Rodney's hip—knowing as he always did, without Rodney ever having told him in so many words, that the warmth of his touch would help bleed away some of the ache that had been with Rodney ever since MX7-478, the knotted scar tissue that had burrowed its roots deep into the bone. "You know that Maddy's going to be okay there, right? Her and Zhang will be able to run things just fine. You've got 'em trained right."

Rodney poked John in the chest with one finger without so much as cracking open an eyelid. "I will have you know that I am an excellent instructor. Northwestern-trained, MIT-approved, 25 years in Atlantis tried-and-tested."

"Not doubting that, Rodney. I'm just saying—you can take a break now, if you want to."

This time both of Rodney's eyes opened, and the set of his mouth was wry. "The way you kicked back and relaxed when Teyla finally ordered you to come off active duty?"

John wrinkled his nose, trying on Rodney the same expression that he'd used to charm things out of the housekeepers when he was kid, even though he was one of the brass now, and was still saluted by every young recruit who met him in the city's corridors with all the eagerness of blind hero-worship. "Hey, she gave me less time to prepare than you had."

"That's because you ignored six months of increasingly unsubtle suggestions," Rodney said, kicking John in the shin. "Gut wounds are not a good look on a 60 year old."

"Flesh wound," John said gently, kicking back. "It's only a gut wound if it actually, you know, damages my guts."

"It astounds me," Rodney said distantly, "that I can claim with honesty to have seen my husband's large intestine."

"Gross, McKay."

"Actually, on _more_ than one occasion," and god help John if Rodney wasn't actually ticking things off on his fingers. "There was that time with the space pirates and the knives, and then, god, that bear thing? If Torren hadn't been there to help you stop your insides from being all the way on the outside..."

"Didn't even bleed that much," John mumbled, shifting in the bed so that his head rested against Rodney's shoulder.

"Shut up," Rodney said, and he sounded a little sleepy now, a little as if the excitement and the tension of the day had finally gotten to him—this day that meant that they'd brought their city so far, all of them; that meant that there could be peace for the two of them, a space for them to rest because the others could continue on without them now. "You made Ronon turn pale and I don't think I've ever heard Jennifer curse that much before."

"Pfft. Her dad was a Marine. That time when Ronon let the twins eat, like, a pound of dirt, she called him a son of a—"

"Yes, yes," Rodney said hurriedly; Jennifer could get anatomical when angry and John was pretty sure he didn't particularly want to recall what she'd suggested to Ronon at full volume in the gate room. "I remember. It scandalised Chuck so much hiccuped for three days straight."

"Good times," John said, drifting a little himself.

"Not good times." Rodney's voice was a little sharper, as if he were waking up; he rolled so that he was facing John, noses inches apart. "Not good times, that was five weeks of—"

"Shh," John said, and ran the palm of his hand the length of Rodney's spine, soothing—feeling soft cotton and body warmth, the curve of spine and the breadth of shoulders still strong after twenty years, a hint of skin where Rodney's t-shirt had ridden up at the back—a gesture that had long been John's best talisman against hurt. "Shh, we got here okay, didn't we? We—"

"Yeah," and Rodney shifted closer so that they were close together, warm, and his kiss was soft. John let the kiss deepen, let Rodney roll him onto his back and nip at the curve of his lower lip, because they were okay, they were fine, they were better than good—they'd been fighting dragons and tilting at windmills together for so long that sometimes they both forgot that they could have this: a happy ending, a journey's end.

_Happy retirement_ John murmured against Rodney's mouth, and Rodney muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a cross between _shut up and let me blow you_ and _oh god, my knees_—and if things were slower than they had been in the first white-hot days of them; if bodies ached and aged and both of them knew by instinct now not to place their weight here or press there; if the sex was comfort and a familiar rite—then John still, oh god, he loved him.

"So," Rodney said a little later, when John's heartbeat had slowed to match the ebb and roar of the waves outside their window. "If _I'm_ the elder statesman of Lantean science, what does that make _you_?"

Judging by the look on his face—mischievous; tip-tilted nose and cheeks flushed pink with amusement and exertion—Rodney had a suggestion, but John didn't give him a chance to say it. Pillow fights may not have been the communication method recommended by most couple's therapists, but it worked just fine for them; they worked just fine; and they fell asleep tangled together, drawn close as always by a lifetime's inexorable gravity.


End file.
